The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, providing information and links
for more than 20,400 of the world's lighthouses. Follow the Directory's Twitter feed for the latest in lighthouse news and Directory updates. Latest update August 11, 2018.

Bad links to photos on Panoramio and Google Maps: On January 30 Google eliminated its photo site Panoramio.com. Unfortunately the Directory had thousands of links (no kidding) to Panoramio. I am removing all remaining photo links to Panoramio and Google Maps versions of Panoramio photos, but some of these bad links remain.

Special thanks this week to Erik Nyfenger for clearing up confusion concerning the two lighthouses of Chautauqua Lake in New York, to Michael Ellison for good news about the Isle of May High Lighthouse in Scotland, and to David McAfee for reporting on the disappearance of the Langbakneset lantern in Huntsville, Alabama.

About this siteFounded in 1999 (during the relocation of North Carolina's
Cape Hatteras lighthouse), the Lighthouse
Directory is a tool for research and study concerning lighthouses and
efforts to preserve those lighthouses. The Directory provides a brief
compilation of basic data for each lighthouse with links to other reliable
information available on the Internet. Since the addition of the Hainan
page in February 2009 listings cover the entire world. However,
this doesn't mean the Directory is complete, because new information
continues to come to light.

I'm glad to hear from site
visitors, especially if you have lighthouse news or photos of rarely-visited
lighthouses.

The Directory has over 30,000 links, and all of them were appropriate
and legitimate when they were added. Occasionally, because a web site
is hacked or a URL is captured, a link leads not to legitimate information
but to an inappropriate site, such as a source of pornography or malicious
software. Please let me know if
this happens, and I will remove the offending link immediately.

What is a lighthouse?It is not so easy to define exactly
what we mean by a lighthouse, and various organizations and individuals
have used very different definitions when describing or classifying lighthouses.
Clearly, all lighthouses are lighted aids to navigation, but not all lighted
aids are considered to be lighthouses.

Some definitions are not controversial. An aid to navigation is
a structure placed on or near navigable water to provide visual guidance
to mariners. A beaconis an aid to navigation that is
fixed in place (that is, not floating). A lighted beacon or lightbeacon is a beacon displaying a light, while an
unlit beacon is called a daybeacon. Often, a lighted beacon is
simply called a light.

Everyone agrees that a lighthouse is a lightbeacon that is, in some sense, a substantial building. Small lightbeacons such as masts, solid pillars, or small cabinets are usually not considered to be lighthouses. In this Directory, the guideline is that a lighthouse should have a height
of at least 4 meters (13 ft) and a cross-section, at the base, of at least
4 square meters (43 sq ft). This simple guideline does not require that
a lighthouse have any particular form or appearance. The structure of
a lighthouse may be enclosed, partially enclosed, or completely open.

The Directory includes listings of certain lights and other sites of
interest to lighthouse fans that aren't lighthouses by this definition.
The titles of those listings are enclosed in square brackets [...]. In
addition, lighthouses destroyed or demolished since 2000 continue to be
listed; their names are preceded by the hash sign #.

A light station is a collection of buildings including a lighthouse, staff quarters, and supporting structures such as a fog signal building housing a foghorn or fogbell, a boathouse, an oil house to store fuel for the light, and so on. A century ago all lighthouses required lightkeepers to maintain and operate the light, fog signal, and other equipment. Today practically all aids to navigation operate automatically, but some light stations have resident caretakers, still called keepers, to maintain the property and guard against vandalism.

The lighthouse listings
Dates shown for lighthouses are the dates when the light was first displayed;
this may be later than the construction date in some cases. A station
establishment date, when listed, is the date when a light was first displayed
at or near the same location. Data concerning the characteristics of lights
comes mostly from the U.S. Coast Guard Light List for U.S. lighthouses
and from the NGA List of Lights for lighthouses in other countries.

The focal plane height of a light is the height above the surface
of the water at which the light is displayed. (The level of the water
surface is usually "mean high water," the level at an average high tide.)
In the listings, "focal plane" refers to the focal plane height. A lantern of
a lighthouse is a room or structure that actually encloses the light.

The heights of the lighthouse towers themselves should be considered
approximate. Different sources use different methods for measuring tower
heights, and those heights may actually change due to changes in ground
level at the base of the tower.

I have attempted to determine whether lighthouse sites and towers are
open to the public. This information is inferred from whatever sources
may be available; it is certainly not guaranteed. Please let
me know if this information, or any information in the Directory,
is incorrect.

Lighthouse listings are marked with ratings of zero to four stars based
on the extent to which the light station is open to visitors. Check the
ratings key to interpret these ratings.

Regional, state, and local lighthouse
preservation organizations are
recognized on each U.S. state page. U.S. organizations interested in
lighthouse preservation nationally are:

The American Lighthouse
Foundation, based in Rockland, Maine. ALF encourages preservation
efforts throughout the country and holds preservation leases on more than
a dozen New England lighthouses.

The United States Lighthouse Society,
formerly based in San Francisco, has moved to the Point No Point Lighthouse
in Hansville, Washington. USLHS has chapters active in the Chesapeake area,
Long Island, Oregon, and Washington, and has been active in supporting preservation
in other areas as well. The Society also publishes a respected journal, The
Keeper's Log, and has a large archive of historic photos of U.S. lighthouses.

Hundreds of lighthouse fans around the world have enriched this site with their
assistance, information, suggestions, and corrections. For a long time I tried
to maintain a list of these many friends and contacts, but it has grown too
long (and too out of date) to display here. However, I must recognize the late Michel Forand for his suggestions and corrections touching essentially every page of this work, and extend thanks to Jeremy D'Entremont, Ted Sarah, and Klaus Huelse, who have
followed the development of the Directory for years. Each of them has contributed
information and support in vital ways, and the Directory would be much less
useful without their participation.

You are welcome to email
the author (rowlett@email.unc.edu) with comments and
suggestions.

All material in The Lighthouse Directory is copyright 2018 by Russ Rowlett
and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many images are presented
by permission of their copyright holders, as noted under the image.

Permission is granted to copy portions of the Directory for personal use and
study, but all other rights are reserved. You are welcome to make links to this
page or to any page of the Directory, provided you credit the source and do
not present the work as your own.

Please do not copy the contents of any page of the Directory to another
site. This is an infringement of copyright, and it also deprives your users
of the benefit of improvements and corrections made to the page. Everyone has permission to link to this page or to any page of the Directory.

The information contained in the directory is as accurate as I can
make it; please notify me
if you find any errors. Neither the author nor the University of
North Carolina assumes any liability for uses made of the information
presented by this web site.